I stopped by for a brief visit with Cindy Zuelsdorf, Marketing Czar at
Ensemble Designs yesterday. Two items caught my eye. The first was the
BrightEye 72 converter that takes a 3 Gb/s, HD or SD SDI video signal and converts it to an HDMI signal that can drive most consumer monitors. The converter allows broadcasters to use off-the shelf monitors in high-end broadcast applications.

"Everyone needs an affordable way to verify closed caption data for SD and HD signals," said Cindy Zuelsdorf, Marketing Czar at Ensemble Designs. "Just about any HDMI monitor can now be used in a station or post house and do everything an engineer needs." BrightEye 72 also that enables users to verify 608 or 708 closed-caption content.

In addition to the video output, time code burn-in and AFD presence are also indicated onscreen. Embedded audio can be verified with the on-screen audio meters.

The converter has a built-in color corrector, which is perfect for changing the color temperature of on-set monitors so they look proper under studio lighting.

This is a cool little box, be sure to check it out.

The second Ensemble Designs item I want to mention isn't a product at all. It's a great tutorial written by Ensemble Designs' chief design engineer, David Wood. His paper is an excellent paper on the importance of MPEG TS clocks, what they do, and how to check them. This four-page tutorial is a must read for every engineer working with MPEG streams.

This is the kind of useful information more companies ought to provide their current and future clients. BTW, Ensemble Designs has 13 more new products on display. See them in booth N1929.